One of my CEOs came into the group meeting last month fresh off a brutal quarter. He had three internal fires burning at once, demanding clients, and some trouble on the horizon at home. Somebody in the room who was trying to be helpful told him he needed more spaciousness in his life. He just laughed. “That sounds like advice for someone with a different life than mine.”
Fair enough. Most leaders hear that word and picture something that has nothing to do with their actual Tuesday. They think of a retreat somewhere with no cell signal, maybe a vacation in Iceland off the grid, or a sabbatical. We think of this time away as something we get to do once we’ve already won, not something available to a person still in the thick of it. When we’re offered space in a moment when we feel like we have none, we file “spaciousness” away as a nice idea for later and everyone goes back to the calendar.
Spaciousness is Not a Reward, it’s Maintenance
I get why. But I think that read is backwards. Spaciousness isn’t a reward for having your life together. It’s more like flossing, or checking your numbers monthly instead of once a year. It’s something you build on purpose because the alternative eventually catches up with you.
And it has almost nothing to do with working less. That’s the part people get stuck on. This isn’t a productivity critique. It’s about being honest that a leader with no margin left in their week is a leader operating without an edge, whether or not the calendar is full.
Where does the good thinking actually happen? Not in the ninth meeting. It’s the twenty minutes before that meeting, if you’re lucky enough to have them, when your brain isn’t being pulled in six directions and something finally has room to surface. Cut that time out entirely and you don’t get more done. You just get more reactive.
So what do you actually do about this, given that your week is already full and nobody’s cancelling your Thursday for you?
Start smaller than feels meaningful. One block on the calendar, defended like you’d defend a client call, where nothing is owed to anyone. A few people in my groups have learned to call it something official sounding, because “open time” gets eaten in a day but “strategy hour” somehow survives. Call it whatever gets it protected, because the important part is that you walk into it without an agenda.
Then look at the small gaps you’re already handed and notice what you do with them, whether it’s the five minutes between calls, the drive home, or standing in line waiting for coffee. Almost all of us fill that instantly, without thinking, if we’re being “productive” it can be with an email or one more call squeezed in.
Cultivating Spaciousness in the Age of Dopamine Addiction
If we’re being less productive (but keep in mind, still lacking in spaciousness), we’ll fill it with scrolling, or a quick video, maybe a mobile game. Part of the problem is that in our moments of spaciousness, especially when we feel over-scheduled, we want a reward. We want the dopamine hit that we get from screen time or food, or alcohol (or even work – workaholism is also real).
I recently watched a video by Dr. Anna Lembke about dopamine and addiction, and it’s no wonder that we have a tendency to shy away from spaciousness. The dopamine hits that we get from things like a smartphone create a dopamine deficit, which in turn drives craving and compulsive overuse.
Welcome Hermetic Stressors
Hermetic stressors are activities that stress your body a little bit, but not enough to hurt you. Your body responds by getting better at handling that kind of stress. Examples of hermetic stressors are exercise, cold exposure, meditation, or any effortful practice done consistently…like a spaciousness and stillness practice perhaps. The benefit of these activities is that you will still get the dopamine, it lasts longer, and it doesn’t end in a deficit.
Plan Spaciousness
I’d challenge you to book just a little bit of space and watch what you actually do with the space once you have it. If you protect an hour and immediately fill it back up with tasks, you haven’t created spaciousness, you’ve just moved your to-do list. The test isn’t whether the time exists, but whether you can sit in it without needing it to produce something or distract yourself.
If you run a team, this isn’t just about your own week either. Every meeting with zero breathing room, every “quick sync” stacked on the last one, teaches your people what a normal week is supposed to look like. They’re watching how you use your time a lot more closely than you think.
Give Yourself Permission
There’s another side to this I think about a lot, and it’s less about strategy and more about permission. Permission to be something other than useful for a stretch of your day.
Spaciousness is Part of the Journey
Some parts of you only show up when you’re not rushing. It’s hard for curiosity to show up when we’re chasing an outcome. When we’re not rushing, it makes space for an idea that hasn’t been asked to justify itself yet. Whatever that quieter, slower form of knowing is that never gets a turn because every hour already has a job assigned to it, and if it’s not assigned, it’s filled with junk.
A lot of leaders I work with have quietly lost touch with that side of themselves and don’t fully register it as a loss. They just notice, offhand, that it’s been months since they’ve had an idea that wasn’t in service of something. That they can’t remember the last time they were curious about a thing with zero practical use that still sparked joy in them. That’s not burnout exactly, but maybe closer to a slow erosion of the parts of you that made you interesting to begin with.
So here’s what I’d try this week. Find twenty minutes with nothing scheduled behind it. Don’t fill it with anything useful or with digital junkfood. See who’s still in there.